The French Ligue 1 football season starts on Friday but the title has already been awarded.
“The question is not whether they will win the league but when,” wrote France Football magazine this week. “The question is not whether they will be champions but how often.”
After spending over €250m on transfers in 12 months, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Motta and today Lucas Moura, PSG are expected to romp to victory in France, not just this season, but for the foreseeable future. After going 29-years without winning Ligue 1, that wait should end this season for PSG fans.
Rolland Courbis, former coach of Olympique Marseille, says:
“We are going to have get used to the idea that coming second in Ligue 1 is like winning a title – just like the guy who comes second to Usain Bolt in the Olympic 100 metres.”
“The only question is whether PSG will win the Champions’ League within the next five years.”
If it takes PSG five years to win the Champions League, I think that the clubs owners, the Qatar Sport Investment will be extremely disappointed.
And their summer spending points to a much quicker timetable. Ibrahimovic is 30 and Thiago Motta is 29-yeras-old. They were bought by PSG to win the Champions League in the next two or three season.
There are a lot of similarities between PSG and Manchester City. They are arguably the two richest clubs in the world, whose fans had gone a long time winning before the new owners started investing petro dollars in the club.
And in the Champions League PSG is going to face the same problem that Man City faced. A low co-efficient based on previous European performance means that PSG could be a third of fourth seed in the draw later this month.
That means that PSG have the possibility of being in this season’s group of death with the likes of Barcelona and Manchester City or Juventus, making progression out of the group stages very challenging for Carlo Ancelotti’s side.
On paper at least though, PSG’s squad has to be ranked in the top five in Europe. The big question is how will they handle of being the pressure of being the hunted this season, as everyone looks to knock of the favourites?
Do you think that PSG will win the Champions League this season?
